October 24th, 2016
In January of 2015, I injured something in my left hip during a hockey game, after playing for 15 years. My physiotherapist was quick to diagnose my injury as a cartilage issue. A few months later my right hip went in a similar manner, except I was picking something up off the floor, not playing hockey. In that time frame I went from being the most athletic person in my group of friends to the guy who could barely walk a few blocks.
After 6 months of seeing different doctors, having had a cortisone shot on the left hip, I was given an MRI date for June 2016, a year and half after my original injury. I was told that my right hip would not even be looked at unless I had successful treatment of the left hip. I ended going back to my family doctor who was kind enough to write a referral for MRI's on both hips with MIC, but I had to pay out of pocket for those MRI's. The Doctor at the sports clinic accepted those MRI's and referred me to an Edmonton surgeon. My research led me to find out that not only would I wait close to a full year just for consultation, but that the surgeon was not even a hip specialist. Further research told me there was no hip specialists in Edmonton that do Arthroscopic Joint Preservation of the Hip.
This was when I turned to the Cambie Surgery Clinic in Vancouver. I was in for a consultation with their hip specialist within a month (paying out of pocket). Again I could have been referred back to the public system to an actual hip specialist in Calgary, but a little research showed that public wait times would see me wait for close to 3 years per hip, basically a sentence to live in pain for close to 6 years (this is not ethical even in a supposedly free system). I personally chose to have surgery at the Cambie Clinic (something majority of Canadians can not afford to do which is not fair), and now (Oct 2016), less than 2 years after the first injury, I have not only had surgery on both hips, they have almost completely healed.
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You said "I personally chose to have surgery at the Cambie Clinic (something majority of Canadians can not afford to do which is not fair)." Although you said it "is not fair", I suppose you would not want to make it fair by NOT using Cambie and let yourself continue to suffer. If you can afford to pay something which someone else cannot, it does not necessarily mean it is not fair. The communist system has shown that trying to make everyone equal did not work; it just made everyone equally lazy and jealous.